Ketchikan, Alaska - Fifty years ago this month, Mrs. John Thomas
of Ballston Spa, New York performed a historic act. According
to the Associated Press, she turned on her electric stove and
cooked a hamburger.

The electricity for her meal
was the first generated by Niagara Mohawk, America's first nuclear
power plant, located in upstate New York.

Also in July of 1955, Canada
announced that it would soon open its first nuclear plant and
that atomic energy would meet 75 percent of country's electrical
needs by 1970. American officials predicted 55 percent of the
country's electricity would be nuclear generated by 1980.

The Atomic Energy Commission
certainly believed in the future of domestic nuclear power. In
the early years after World War II, the United States imported
nearly 90 percent of its uranium from Africa and Canada. So the
AEC moved to spur native development of uranium for weaponry
and potential electric power by spending nearly $2.5 billion
to encourage production, according to historian Raye Ringoltz.

"The AEC constructed roads
into the backcountry, promised $10,000 bonuses for new lodes
of high-grade ore, guaranteed minimum prices and paid up to $50
per ton for .3 percent ore, constructed mills, helped with haulage
expenses and posted geologic data on promising areas," Ringoltz
wrote in "Uranium Frenzy, Boom and Bust on the Colorado
Plateau."

By the mid 1950s, there were
more than 800 uranium mines operating in the Colorado plateau
alone. Grizzled prospectors like Charles Augustus Steen and Vernon
Pick became folk heroes and instant multi-millionaires by selling
their claims to larger companies.

The rush to find enough uranium
to meet the expected needs was officially on as prospectors combed
much of the western part of the country, looking not for color
in a stream, but for the clicking of a Geiger counter

Oddly enough, despite its reputation
as the mineral storehouse of America, federal government officials
didn't expect to find much uranium in Alaska.

One of the leading experts
in the field, Robert Nininger of the Atomic Energy Commission
wrote a book called "Minerals for Atomic Energy." In
it, he said that Alaska was unlikely to have much uranium. In
fact, he believed that little uranium would be found at all in
the coastal mountains from the Aleutians to Mexico.

In general, the AEC believed
that most commercial grade uranium was located in the Rockies
and parts of the Great American Basin of the Southwest. Specifically,
the Four Corners area where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona
meet.

But officials in Alaska felt
that there was uranium in the territory. They encouraged uranium
prospecting in the 1950s. A bulletin from the Territorial Department
of Mining in the spring of 1955, stated that 1955 would be the
year that uranium would be discovered in Alaska.

The prospectors themselves
needed little encouragement.

In his book, "Nine Lives
of an Alaskan Bush Pilot" Ketchikan's Ken Eichner talks
at length about prospecting in the hills of Southern Southeast
and British Columbia in the 1950s.

"I was bitten by the uranium
bug so this was the era when everywhere I went, I was flying
with a nucliometer (a larger, more powerful version of the Geiger
counter) fastened to my airplane," Eichner wrote. "That
meant I was flying into every little nook and cranny that I could
into. It was a funny thing . The tighter into it you got, the
better the readings were. It was kind of a sucker thing for us,
but we soon learned that when the mountains started to close
in you, what little uranium activity there was would be concentrated
so you would get a higher reading, even though there wasn't a
higher content of uranium."

Ken Eichner, author
of "Nine Lives of an Alaskan Bush Pilot", in October
2002 at a book signing in Ketchikan...
Photo by Dick Kauffman

In his book, Eichner indicated
he also thought that Southern Prince of Wales might have uranium
and planned to take a look at it in 1954.

"As fate would have it,
one day I had a trip down to MacLean Arm (toward Cape Chacon
on the southern tip of POW)," Eichner wrote. "On the
way back, I decided to fly the nucliometer past Bokan Mountain,
but on the way there I hit some heavy turbulence and had to turn
aside."

Bokan Mountain would prove
to have the largest then known uranium deposit in Alaska, but
its discovery would have to wait a year for the combined efforts
of Ketchikan's Don Ross, Kelly Adams and Bill Easton.

In April of 1956, The Alaska
Sportsman - the predecessor of Alaska Magazine - published a
lengthy account of the trio's efforts . Adams, a geologist, disagreed
with the federal mines assessment of the uranium potential in
Alaska and Ross and Easton agreed with him. They put aside $6,000
to cover their costs. It was decided that Ross - the more experienced
pilot - would work full-time on the venture. Adams would be the
mechanic/geologist and Easton the financial advisor and bookkeeper.
In April of 1955, they formed the Uranium 55 syndicate.

"Kelly Adams, pilot, geologist,
aircraft mechanic and longtime prospector reasoned that Alaska
lands could possess valuable deposits of uranium because they
definitely had other minerals," wrote B.G. Olson in The
Alaska Sportsman. "Don Ross , a successful young pilot and
a close friend of Adams agreed with him. Bill Easton, another
friend and successful businessman, was also interested in this
new adventure.".

They purchased a nucliometer
and a Piper Cub J-3. In late April, Ross started flying over
Prince Of Wales Island, the most likely location. On May 18,
Ross was flying with his wife Jan when they got a very high reading
above Bokan Mountain, a 2,500 foot peak between Moira Sound and
Kendrick Bay at the south end of Prince Of Wales.

Poor weather prevented them
from landing at the site, but the next day Ross and Adams returned.

"Suddenly the nucliometer
went crazy," Olson wrote. "It flipped clear off the
dial at the least sensitive settingThe prospectors then had to
find some way to reach the "hot spot" without landing
on the salt water and leaving their plane to the mercy of the
tidesThey decided that Hessa Lake, about two miles from the outcropping,
would be the best bet."

Ross and his wife Jan returned
the next day, landed at the lake, hiked to the outcropping and
staked the site. The syndicate had only been looking for two
weeks.

Samples were sent out for analysis
to the Atomic Energy Commission under heavy secrecy because the
group didn't want any competition on the mountain. Knowing that
it would take weeks to get a full report, the Uranium 55 also
contacted Art Glover, the assayer-engineer in Ketchikan for the
Territorial Department of Mines who examined the ore samples
and then contacted Phil Holdsworth, the territorial Commissioner
of Mines in Juneau.

Holdsworth then flew to the
mine site and took a number of samples. He met with the syndicate
and then contacted the Climax Molybdenum Company in Colorado.
Climax sent employees to Ketchikan in June to investigate the
claim. Their tests indicated it was high grade ore, even higher
than the uranium ore that was being currently mined in the Rockies.

By now, it was no longer possible
to keep the work a secret and banner headlines heralding the
big "POW" discoveries began appearing the Ketchikan
Chronicle and the Ketchikan Daily News. The syndicate sold some
shares for additional operating capital and staked 14 more claims
around the hotspot.

Other locals rushed to the
area and began prospecting the nearby mountains.

"In Southeastern Alaska,
especially around Ketchikan, rumors started to leak out about
"the big strike on Prince Of Wales," Olson wrote in
The Alaska Sportsman. "Claim jumpers turned up , caused
trouble, then disappeared again. Ross had to 'ditch' other planes
which tried to follow him every time he headed for the claim."

Members of the syndicate went
to Seattle to begin negotiations with Climax. Olson reported
that Uranium 55 initially asked for $5 million for the claim.
The company declined and entered into five days of negotiations.
The result was that Climax gave Uranium 55 $25,000 for the right
to prove up and explore the claim for one year. At the end of
the year, Climax agreed to pay the syndicate an additional $55,000,
plus $50,000 a year or 25 percent of the profits whichever was
greater until 1960. The Kendrick Bay Mining Corporation was founded.

Mining began in 1957 and continued
sporadically until 1971. Initially, the company used an open-pit
mine but then switched to underground mining. Approximately 90,000
tons of ore was removed from the site, according to the Alaska
Department of Commerce and Economic Development. One of the challenges
reported by the Commerce Department was that most of the ore
was in the .1 percent range and not high enough to economically
feasible except in time of great demand

The biggest effort was in 1971,
when 50,000 tons were mined by C&M Construction on Montana.
According to the Ketchikan Daily News, a mile and half long road
was built to get the ore to tidewater where it would be loaded
on barges.

"Forty men now live in
the self-contained quarters that can hold up to 42," the
Daily News reported in the summer of 1971. "They work three
shifts a day, seven days a week. (Company officials) said the
ore should be extracted by the middle or end of September."

It was reported that most of
the uranium would be sold to electric companies for nuclear power
plants. But even by 1971, the "boom" was clearly off
the nuclear rose.

It was an example of the government
giveth and the government taketh away.

"Utah alone had produced
approximately nine million tons of ore valued at $25 million
by the end of 1962, " Ringoltz wrote. " But then the
industry almost came to a standstill. The AEC, now holding ample
reserves, announced an eight-year limited program, and finally
completely stopped buying uranium in 1970. Private industry triggered
a brief second boom when nuclear power plants came on line in
the mid-70s, but foreign competition, federal regulations and
nuclear fears virtually put an end to domestic uranium mining."

The multi-billion dollar bankruptcy
of the nuclear based Washington Public Power Supply System and
the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the
late 1970s and 1980s further turned the public against civilian
use of nuclear power. In the latter part of the 20th century,
many of the older nuclear plans began decommissioning while the
public debate raged over how to safely dispose of the spent nuclear
fuel.

Although Bokan Mountain is
dormant these days, there is still interest some in uranium mining.,
particularly in light of the country's increased reliance on
foreign oil supplies, The 6,000 acre Boulder Creek property near
Nome is the largest deposit found to date in Alaska and preliminary
work continued on site development this spring, according to
the web site for Full Metal Minerals LTD of Vancouver B.C.

Dave Kiffer is a freelance
writer living in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Contact Dave at dave@sitnews.us